In many ways, the team members are the heart of this intervention. Their experience, expertise, intelligence, and relationship networks are the tools by which change is expected to happen. A significant portion of our data collection explored the skills, experience, and pilot activities of SC2 team leads and members. We have identified several characteristics that were regarded as important by participants in the pilot and associated with achieving outcomes. Our findings are summarized below, under the following headings:

SC2 team leads and members represented a wide range of experience in terms of tenure and seniority. According to the SC2 Council’s web survey of SC2 team members, 38 percent of team members had less than 5 years of experience with the federal government, while 29 percent had more than 20 years of experience.23

When pilot city stakeholders worked with more senior team members, the stakeholders appreciated their specialized expertise. Senior team members brought deep knowledge of federal programs and policies. They also brought access to high-level federal staff at their home agencies who had the authority to make decisions on behalf of the agency or resolve situations in which a city had received conflicting information from various departments or individuals within an agency. With this type of access, team members gathered needed information efficiently, set up meetings to facilitate decisions, and encouraged their peers and superiors to think creatively about solutions. In one city, a senior team member was critical in assisting the city with evaluating and reconciling years of poorly kept financial records, thus allowing the city to avoid the recapture of nearly $20 million in housing funds.

Extensive federal government experience also appeared to be an asset when the SC2 team lead or team member was called upon to lead complex, multi-stakeholder planning processes. For example, one team member, a senior administrator from the Department of Labor, successfully built a multi-stakeholder planning group to improve the alignment of workforce employment, training, and education programs with the needs of employers for skilled workers. Many stakeholders credited the team member with shepherding the complex process to completion, an endeavor that many thought could not succeed. The member’s experience as the administrator of multiple offices within the Department provided her with both managerial skills and experience in building stakeholder collaborations. She was able to foster collaboration and challenge key players to engage and think strategically about the region’s workforce development system.

Senior team members also helped cities address bureaucratic barriers, or red tape, that they encountered while applying for federal assistance or implementing federal programs. SC2 teams in each pilot city made significant progress in this area: 8 of the 40 key accomplishments identified in section 3.5 above included the members helping their cities circumvent red tape. These accomplishments were due mostly to the ability of senior team members to quickly obtain definitive answers to specific questions from their home agencies. Seniority and substantial government experience was important to breaking down barriers within the federal government and accessing federal decision makers. With this type of access, team members gathered needed information efficiently, set up meetings to facilitate decisions, and encouraged their peers and superiors to think creatively about solutions.

Although some city stakeholders preferred senior team members to junior members, we observed that seniority and long-standing federal government experience were not important for all SC2 Team work. For example, mid-level staff and staff with fewer years of federal government experience were able to make important contributions by helping to fill capacity gaps, develop programs, build new relationships in the community, and facilitate resolution of the more standard transactional requests from the city. More than a high seniority level, this work required energy, content knowledge, and a willingness to travel or move to the pilot city. One highly effective mid-level team member was complimented for bringing publically available grant opportunities to the attention of city staff, making it “her business to get involved in all things [related to neighborhood development],” and acting as a liaison with other federalpartners.

The findings on seniority and experience suggest that the SC2 approach does not necessarily require senior staff to be effective. However, senior staff can play important roles in brokering access to federal decision makers and in leading or facilitating complex planning processes.

23 Eighty-one team members completed some portion of the survey. At this time, the study team does not know how many people were sent the survey, and thus cannot calculate the formal survey response. Between September 2011 and March 2013, 138 federal employees were assigned to a SC2 team at some level.

SC2 team leads, more so than any other partners in the pilot, were given a role with high levels of both uncertainty and responsibility. SC2 team leads found themselves working in a new environment in which they were required to quickly establish relationships with city stakeholders and federal colleagues. In cities marked by limited capacity and near-daily crises, SC2 team leads were tasked with advancing the work of the team members to address city needs while the SC2 pilot was but one of many priorities competing for city leaderships’ attention. Additionally, in a number of the pilot cites, SC2 team leads faced challenges related to unclear priorities for the engagement, unengaged mayors, and varying degrees of commitment from the federal agencies represented by the team. Such an environment required SC2 team leads to be resourceful in order to keep team members moving forward in addressing city priorities, to overcome barriers to progress, and to help find solutions to long-standing problems.

SC2 team leads accomplished these tasks by being strong leaders, facilitators, managers, and communicators. They did so in a variety of contexts, from city hall to interactions with team members to collaborations with community members. It was critical for SC2 team leads to be able to manage the day-to-day work of team members, engage city leaders about priorities for the SC2 team, understand and work within the local political context, and mobilize other team members and other federal colleagues when needed. More so than other team members, it was important for the leads to be generalists rather than experts, given the need for them to work across numerous topic areas and with city leaders and federal agencies. We found that these work skills, habits, and experiences were generally more important to the success of the SC2 team than either the SC2 team lead’s content expertise or the extent to which the lead had pre-existing connections in the pilot city.

From conversations with SC2 pilot stakeholders, we heard that the most effective leads understood the need to respect their city’s autonomy and leadership. These leads got to know the culture within city hall, the city’s previous development efforts, and the city’s motivations for the major initiatives planned. They then used this information to help shape and guide the SC2 team’s work. By showing respect and understanding, the lead earned the city’s trust, which sometimes translated into team members being given the freedom to conduct work on city priorities with little oversight from city staff members who were already stretched too thin by other demands. SC2 team leads, in effect, were able to build credibility through their actions and the actions of their team members.

As a case in point, one SC2 team worked with a city that went through a political transition in the midst of the pilot, leading to a great deal of uncertainty and a resetting of priorities for the engagement. The ensuing chaos delayed implementation and threatened progress. In response, the SC2 team lead focused on building new relationships to address city priorities, overcoming the city’s very limited staff capacity, and bypassing city stakeholders who were unwilling to engage in the pilot. The lead formed a strong working relationship with the new mayor, which helped clarify priority areas and allowed implementation to begin in earnest. Additionally, the lead formed relationships with local consultants hired by the mayor to engage citizens in local government. This created opportunities for the SC2 team to build local collaborations to address education and health access that incorporated community concerns. Finally, the lead worked with the SC2 team to develop partnerships with local anchor institutions that had long been uninvolved in city affairs, creating opportunities for collaboration that are expected to be sustained over time. Faced with barriers to progress, this lead found a way to not only advance city priorities but also to create partnerships between the city and local institutions likely to build city capacity for years to come.

We observed that SC2 team leads and members seemed more likely to further the city’s priorities when they were able and willing to work outside of their traditional agency roles and to embrace creative approaches to responding to city needs. As discussed, pilot cities had numerous demands on their time and limited capacity to address needs. This sometimes resulted in them not being able to give sufficient time to the SC2 pilot. In these instances, it was important for team members to be able to identify opportunities with little oversight from the city and make the connections necessary to advance city priorities. Successful team members were frequently praised for being creative problem solvers and go- getters.

Proactive team members used their experience and knowledge to develop new projects and move stalled projects along with little oversight from their cities. In one city, team members noticed that the city’s separate priorities for downtown revitalization and transit improvements were actually closely related, and they encouraged the city to align plans for these priorities into a comprehensive and successful approach. In another, the most successful team members were those who took the initiative in finding work, given limited direction from the city. The HUD team member in that city worked most closely with the independent housing authority, long in HUD receivership, helping it to resolve legacy disputes between the authority and the city. These necessary steps will help pave the way for the authority to return to local control. In a third city, the SC2 team took a dormant city plan to address homelessness and initiated an interagency council on homelessness that the city then took over and managed. In a fourth city, team members identified two opportunities for collaborative efforts in the region—a workforce development initiative and a skilled-manufacturing business development program—and assembled local partners to support each.

Team members’ ability to respond flexibly and creatively seemed to vary based on the culture of their home department, agency, and specific job responsibilities. Team members from agencies with more rigid structures for determining work assignments seemed to have a more difficult time working creatively with their cities. As might be expected, team members whose pre-SC2 pilot federal jobs were compliance-related seemed to struggle the most with the needed creative thinking.

A notable finding is the extent to which team members were able to broker new relationships in pilot cites or improve strained relationships.

To establish new relationships, team members tended to use their close association with the mayor’s office to make connections and begin conversations with potential partners. Furthermore, team members noted that their ability to develop relationships was easier when potential community partners viewed them as neutral outsiders. This was seen, for example, in the formation of a city-wide partnership to link health care practitioners to more efficiently and cost-effectively provide healthcare. In helping to establish the partnership, the team member reached out to a diverse array of stakeholder organizations with little history of working together or with the city. The end result was a coalition of nearly 50 organizations that continues to meet on a biweekly basis to improve community health care access. Additionally, the members’ ability to develop new relationships at times was enhanced by their status as representatives of the federal government and by the cachet attached to being part of a White House initiative. One city department representative noted that a meeting convened by a team member drew more than five times as many attendees as when she had held similar meetings in the past.

In addition to helping form new relationships, team members on several occasions played a key role in repairing existing but strained relationships between pilot city governments and their community partners. Two pilot cities had broken relationships with their local housing authorities; in both cases team members were able to establish new working relationships. In one case, a team member was able to work with the housing authority to remove a barrier to housing individuals experiencing homelessness, resulting in housing for 70 people. In another case, a team member helped repair the relationship between the city and a private sector group that was involved in a transportation initiative. The SC2 team was able to help the parties reach an agreement on the type of transportation to be implemented and how the project would be financed. By brokering the agreement, the SC2 team enabled the deployment of a stalled $25 million DOT TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant to help support the effort.

As with forming new relationships, the neutral “outsider” status of team members appeared to aid in repairing relationships. Additionally, the ability of team members to engender the trust of city leadership was important to building and repairing relationships as it allowed the city to feel comfortable with team members working in its stead. For embedded team members especially, a close working relationship with the city and physical presence in city hall helped convey the message that the SC2 pilot was a bottom-up approach, which in turn helped create a dynamic within which improved relationships could flourish.

Team members operated from three types of locations—in pilot cities at or near city hall, from a regional/field office, or from their department headquarters in the Washington, DC, area. We did not find a clear correlation between members’ locations and their effectiveness. The relative importance of the location of the team members depended on their individual skill set and the specific activities on which they focused. Embedded team members, though, had an advantage over similarly qualified remote members in that they could more effectively build local relationships and develop plans due to their ability to invest the time and face-to-face communication essential to those activities.

In general, team members who were located on-site were able to effectively perform activities such as relationship building and program and plan development. Being located on-site seemed to facilitate, or at least not obstruct, these types of activities. On-site members seemed particularly effective at building new connections with and among local stakeholders, for which their physical presence was often necessary. They were also effective at building new relationships between federal agencies and local stakeholders. For instance, team members from HHS in one city were responsible for creating a now permanent council of behavioral health care providers, which worked with the city to undertake a regional needs assessment, draft a comprehensive regional plan for expanding behavioral health resources, and produce a guide to existing local behavioral health resources. Arguably, this kind of task—which involved a great deal of face time and conversations with local stakeholders—was one uniquely available to on-site team members.

Members located at headquarters or regional offices, which we refer to collectively as remote staff, were most successful when providing responsive, transactional assistance, connecting cities to federal government employees, and/or linking the city to resources or models. The responsive or transactional assistance they provided was typically content-based and specific to a problem that needed to be solved. These tasks could be accomplished without extensive personal relationships or an intimate understanding of the local government culture and political dynamics. For instance, remote team members from DOT helped a pilot city release funds to purchase a riverboat as part of an effort to expand its tourism industry. This was accomplished through a single, brief visit to the city and several conversations internally at DOT, with very little need for working on-site.

The ability of remote team members to connect their city to federal resources and national models depended on their familiarity with resources in their agency as well as their content knowledge regarding best practices in their fields. This was true, however, for any team member providing transactional assistance, regardless of their geographic location (for instance, the background knowledge needed to repurpose a COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) grant in a pilot city to retain 120 officers on the force of the local police department was provided by an on-site team member, not a remote one.)

Remote staff were able to perform well while completing relationship building and program and plan development activities when they had existing positive relationships with local stakeholders. The ability to travel to a pilot city on a regular (or even occasional) basis further increased the potential impact of remote staff. For instance, a remote team member from HUD working with a pilot city was able to broker a relationship between the chief information officer of that city and the chief information officer of another city that was not part of the pilot, which helped the pilot city make significant progress toward developing a “311” site to increase transparency in city government. The HUD team member was also able to develop an operating procedure for implementing a version of HUDStat (“City Stat”) into city operations, which involved training for the mayor, the mayor’s executive team, and the heads of city departments. All of these achievements were accomplished through regular contact and some travel to the city, which was infrequent but crucial for understanding the local political climate and getting the whole of city government on the same page.

An additional finding about the effects of team members’ location was that the performance of regionally based staff was perceived by stakeholders to be affected, sometimes positively but often negatively, by pre-existing relationships. In one city, a regional team member from EPA not only had a long history in the region but also had been previously embedded in city hall for a few years on another executive loan program. These pre-existing relationships gave the team member credibility in the city and knowledge of the issues the city faced. Relationships with regional representatives were more problematic when regional representatives were assigned to issues on which they had previously conflicted with the city. One city worked with a regional agency representative continuing discussions long under way to find a new way to deal with the dredged material from a port. The facilities that were accepting the dredged sediment were soon to reach capacity and the city was looking to the agency for assistance in finding creative solutions in order to maintain a viable port. According to all parties, no progress was made in finding mutually acceptable solutions to this challenge.

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